Scottie Scheffler spotted on range at PGA Championship
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LOUISVILLE, Ky. – World No. 1 Scottie Scheffler showed up to the practice area at Valhalla Golf Club for this week’s PGA Championship on Monday afternoon.
Scheffler was listed in the PGA Championship field, but his status for the year’s second major was uncertain since it was so close to the due date for wife Meredith to deliver the couple’s first child. He has won four of his previous five starts, and his wife was visibly pregnant while attending the first two of those wins, the Arnold Palmer Invitational presented by Mastercard and THE PLAYERS Championship in March. She was home in Dallas because of the approaching due date when Scottie won the Masters and RBC Heritage last month.
A 10-time PGA TOUR winner, Scheffler, 27, has not competed since winning the RBC Heritage on April 22, meaning he arrives at Valhalla after three weeks away from competitive golf.
Scheffler’s return to competition marks the resumption of his dominant season. He is No. 1 by a wide margin in both the FedExCup and Official World Golf Ranking. Rory McIlroy is the only other player with multiple TOUR titles this season, and Scheffler’s four wins have all come in the biggest events thus far this year. In addition to his Masters victory, he successfully defended his PLAYERS title and won two Signature Events (Arnold Palmer Invitational presented by Mastercard, RBC Heritage).
In March, Scheffler became the first player to win back-to-back titles at TPC Sawgrass. Then he won his second Masters, joining Tiger Woods and Jack Nicklaus as the only players to win multiple Masters and PLAYERS. Scheffler also became the fourth-youngest player to win multiple Masters, trailing only Woods, Nicklaus and Seve Ballesteros. Scheffler also won the Masters in 2022.
His RBC Heritage win made him the first player since Bernhard Langer in 1985 to win at Harbour Town the week after winning the Masters.
Scheffler said at Augusta National that plans were in place for him to leave immediately if Meredith went into labor. They were not needed, however, and Scheffler was able to play the following week in Hilton Head Island, South Carolina.
Even after his layoff, Scheffler will be the favorite at Valhalla. He will be trying to do something that’s been accomplished just twice in the past 50 years, however. Woods (2002) and Jordan Spieth (2015) are the only players to win the year’s first two majors since Nicklaus did it in 1972.